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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27817093">lost, and found.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/yukioapologist/pseuds/yukioapologist'>yukioapologist</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Sad with a Happy Ending, i think it’s a happy ending, it depends on how you look at it - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:54:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,703</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27817093</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/yukioapologist/pseuds/yukioapologist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>shiro deals with the aftermath of everything satan did. and he lives with the guilt of hiding something important from his sons.</p><p>OR</p><p>shiro is a mess stumbling his way through life into his fifties, until he finally finds peace.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Yuri Egin/Fujimoto Shirou</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>lost, and found.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>before you read this, it’s important to know that this is... more of a vent than anything. i lost my grandmother, my nan, over a month ago and this is really just projecting my own grief onto shiro to get some of it out of my system.</p><p>it does stick to canon for the most part, just with my own added twists thrown in.</p><p>it’s also not proof read, so i apologize in advance for any spelling errors.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>the silence on the morning of his first christmas without yuri is chilling. the twins weren’t expecting it, hadn’t been introduced to the concept yet only because shiro wasn’t ready to celebrate without their mother.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>in all their years of friendship, even though yuri hadn’t lived with him at any point, he was always awoken by her. given a gift and the promise of a home cooked meal with their closest friends. they’d all lounge together in his apartment, watching various american christmas films and eating an assortment of desserts rick and jenny had baked together.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>he’d squish on to his couch with yuri, michaela, igor and osceola, while the usual trio, kai and makiko sprawled across each other on his floor. the entire day was full of laughter, and shiro enjoyed the company more than he cared for the holiday. he wished he could go back to these days, reliving them, committing every speck of detail to memory, making sure his friends knew he loved them instead of just assuming they knew. and they did know, but now he knows himself how important it is to actually hear the words. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>there were a lot of things he wished he hadn’t left unsaid, because this year, igor and makiko were spending it in grief, like him. osceola had busied himself with work, training his new student, lewin light. rick, jenny, michaela and yuri were dead. kai was now fatherless and the twins orphaned. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>and so his apartment was long abandoned, and he had to busy himself with holiday duties for the temple. trying to distract himself, trying to ignore the absence of everyone he loved on a day he had spent with them every year since they’d all met properly.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>instead of eating rj’s baked sweets, he was snacking on what had been left by guests, poorly made cookies by seishiro, surviving on coffee and the knowledge that he had two almost-year old boys waiting for him to put them to bed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>he could be strong. he </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> strong. he knew that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>but he didn’t want to be. he wished he didn’t have to, that it could be easy to give up and be with those he’d loved and lost again. to wait with them until it was time for igor, osceola, makiko, and the twins to join them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>he knew that was unrealistic, and unfair, and so he tried to push it to the back of his mind. he told himself they would want him to grow old – because they’d all wanted to do that together.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>yuri was always telling rick she’d be around long enough to pester him even when kai had children of his own. that she’d still be an overbearing aunt at 82, and hopefully a grandmother herself by then. igor and michaela had wanted a big family too, children to spoil and love well into old age.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>but none of them were getting that now… were they? he and makiko were single parents, and igor a childless widow. they would grow old, and their children would grow old – but those they loved, those they wanted to spend their lives with… what did that mean if they couldn’t do it with them?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>sure, he was happy he could give the twins the lives yuri would’ve wanted for them, to the best of his ability. they had a fighting chance, and with rin’s powers locked away, he could live a normal life too. he had 17 years left to turn them into respectable adults, to do yuri’s job for her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>he just wished he could do it with her. every time they accomplished something new, it hurt. their first steps, their first words, their first foods… first everything. alongside the pride, it elicited pain that yuri wasn’t there to witness it too. that the four of them couldn’t live out the life she has envisioned for them, right before she died.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>he often wondered if she really believed they could do it, or if she was just giving him an outline of what she wanted. giving him directions with her dying breaths without being explicit about it. if she knew she wasn’t going to make it before she’d even collapsed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>but that was a dangerous road to go down, and shiro snaps himself out of it by going to the twins’ room, helping them change into their pyjamas and picking out a bedtime story to read to them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>he focuses on the boys, smiling and laughing when rin points out pictures in the book that he finds silly, fondly answering any questions yukio’s little year old brain can manage to push out even if it is just gibberish that doesn’t make sense, making a fun guessing game out of it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>the happiness in moments like this, it’s the only times it’s real. the only time he can just be there in the present, soaking in his time with his sons and not letting anything other than them penetrate his mood.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>only it always goes away when he’s alone. the sadness and the grief creep back in as soon as both boys are under the covers, snoozing soundly. oblivious to the world and all of the bad things in it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>and shiro is alone again, sniffling over a photo album of the memories he’d made with his family over the years. candid snapshots on birthdays, on holidays, even just simple night outs. each birthday set has the person in question covered in icing and bits of cake, the seven of them midlaughter.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>each of them posing together, all on different days. captures of rick and makiko’s wedding, of kai’s birth and the day yuri had been made his godmother.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>the last one had been taken before yuri had left for section 13. shiro still isn’t sure who took it, it having been slipped under his apartment door one day, but he and yuri are laughing, and rick has a drunken blush on his face, presumably from them teasing him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>it’s his favourite picture. it was before things had gone to shit, when being happy was a common feeling and he felt secure in thinking his best friends would be by his side for a long, long time. maybe he would show it to the boys when they were old enough.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>maybe he would show them the entire album, let them watch their mother continue growing even in her adult years, to see how beautiful and loving she really was. how </span>
  <em>
    <span>loved</span>
  </em>
  <span> she was by everyone around her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>but for now, the memories are too much, and he can’t look at them without sobbing, and he thinks that maybe seeing their father like this isn’t appropriate for toddlers to witness, and that’s how he justifies keeping the photos as his secret.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>he doesn’t mean for it to prolong into years. doesn’t mean to hide them, doesn’t mean to continue treating them as if they’re a dirty secret when it’s not dirty at all. but every time he reaches for them, when he wants to fess up, to admit to the boys that he’d lied about not knowing their mother, to confess that he’d actually known her all her life, and been in love with her for most of his twenties and early thirties – he chokes up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>the words die in his throat, and he has to wipe more tears off the album, and it ends up going back into his hiding place. because he’s not ready. it still feels like yesterday that he’d lost them all, and he feels guilty for keeping these memories from the boys, for turning christmas into just another day, with few celebrations beyond cake simply because he can’t do the full nine yards like he had with yuri and the rest, but maybe he’s weak after all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>because thirteen years later, he’s sitting in the very place he’d scattered yuri’s ashes, sobbing and pawing at the ground even though he knows her remains are gone in the wind now, apologizing for keeping her a secret from their sons. apologizing for not doing a good enough job raising them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>apologizing for the fact that it’s her scattered into the wind, and not him. feeling more lost than he’s ever felt in his forty-nine years, desperately wishing he could trade places with her and give his boys the parent they deserve.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>but he can’t, so instead he curls up on the ground, crying himself into exhaustion, before passing out in the last place he’d ever held yuri in his arms. deluding himself into thinking he was with her again, if only for a few hours.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>he tells himself he’ll come clean when he gets home, when the guilt weighs heavy on his chest, yet each time, he doesn’t. he can’t bring himself to do it, can’t look his boys in the eye and admit to lying to them for their entire lives, to hiding photos of their own mother from them for so many years.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>the load gets heavier and heavier, until it’s suddenly lifted the day he achieves his peace. the day he sacrifices himself to save rin – and he knows that even if the boys never stumble across those photos, the creep himself will somehow find a way to show the twins.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>and any potential anger they may have can wait, shiro thinks, because he’s laughing with his family again. he’s in yuri’s arms, clutching his stomach while rick tells some lame joke shiro wouldn’t have ordinarily found funny, and jenny is teasing him while michaela looks like she’s questioning her friendship choices.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>he feels whole again for the first time in fifteen years, and as much as he wishes he’d had more time with his sons, his heart finally has what it’s been yearning for, and the photo album is now long forgotten in the loose floorboard of his bedroom, new memories forming in its place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>memories where he shows his affection whenever he can, telling his friends he loves them more than he ever had when they were alive. it brings him peace he’d never had before, and it makes him anxiously excited for the day their sons join him, seventy years down the line.</span>
</p>
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